A Very English Arcadia
(After 'The Mores' by John Clare, see below)

by Bob Beagrie

“For what you call the Law is but a club of the rich over the lowest of men, sanctifying the conquest of the earth by a few and making their theft the way of things.” - Gerrard Winstanley, 1652 

The green and pleasant countryside
of beautiful bone fields,
sacrificial pastures
of monocrops beyond the sign –
‘No Road Here’,
its obsession with fences, railings,
boundaries, grills, grids, markers,

an idyll beside the country
not in the country but adjacent
and flung far from whatever’s wild,
or accessible for roaming
or rambling by anything other
than mycelium,
sub-soil colonies of thread-like hyphae

as tho’ the very birds should learn to know
they must no further go

for, like the battle-scarred nobles
of féodalité, fief and feudom,
today’s rulers and hedgefunders
naturalise positions of entitlement,
ownership, pastoral views
of generational superiority, through titles,
hoarded wealth, inherited estates
and pass-me-down privilege –

singing brook waters dribble free
beneath The Devil’s Bridge
where we spot a dragonfly
drop Pooh sticks, bade bye-bye

yet unlike the blood-spattered progenitors
of their pedigree, who, in their might
and cold savagery carved England
into manageable plots, stuffed
the commons in their own pockets
through acts of enclosure,
                                    expulsions,
mass clearances          forced vagrancy,
the chinless wonders of refined tastes
carry no muscle memory of battle mayhem
relying on old writs, histories of legitimacy,
myths of divine right

a trinity of crows guard the track up to the moortop
beyond the creak of the kissing gate
like a pod of whales the clouds migrate –

On the evening news a billionaire MP’s
photo-op with a foodbank queue,
crocodile smile sweet as treacle,
and a borrowed Kia Rio
to promote an optic of a man you might know,

while they prize out your eyes,
make you pay through the nose,

One law for the poor and some plunder-dream
called lifestyle for the well-at-heel,
such unbounded freedoms only come with capital –

in little paddocks little minds to please
each little tyrant with his little sign,
a philistine slave with smothered sigh.

The Mores

by John Clare

Far spread the moorey ground a level scene
Bespread with rush and one eternal green
That never felt the rage of blundering plough
Though centurys wreathed spring’s blossoms on its brow
Still meeting plains that stretched them far away
In uncheckt shadows of green brown, and grey

Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene
Nor fence of ownership crept in between
To hide the prospect of the following eye
Its only bondage was the circling sky

One mighty flat undwarfed by bush and tree
Spread its faint shadow of immensity
And lost itself, which seemed to eke its bounds
In the blue mist the horizon’s edge surrounds

Now this sweet vision of my boyish hours
Free as spring clouds and wild as summer flowers
Is faded all – a hope that blossomed free,
And hath been once, no more shall ever be

Inclosure came and trampled on the grave
Of labour’s rights and left the poor a slave
And memory’s pride ere want to wealth did bow
Is both the shadow and the substance now

The sheep and cows were free to range as then
Where change might prompt nor felt the bonds of men
Cows went and came, with evening morn and night,
To the wild pasture as their common right

And sheep, unfolded with the rising sun
Heard the swains shout and felt their freedom won
Tracked the red fallow field and heath and plain
Then met the brook and drank and roamed again
The brook that dribbled on as clear as glass
Beneath the roots they hid among the grass
While the glad shepherd traced their tracks along
Free as the lark and happy as her song

But now all’s fled and flats of many a dye
That seemed to lengthen with the following eye
Moors, loosing from the sight, far, smooth, and blea
Where swopt the plover in its pleasure free
Are vanished now with commons wild and gay
As poet’s visions of life’s early day

Mulberry-bushes where the boy would run
To fill his hands with fruit are grubbed and done

And hedgrow-briars – flower-lovers overjoyed
Came and got flower-pots – these are all destroyed
And sky-bound mores in mangled garbs are left
Like mighty giants of their limbs bereft

Fence now meets fence in owners’ little bounds
Of field and meadow large as garden grounds
In little parcels little minds to please
With men and flocks imprisoned ill at ease

Each little path that led its pleasant way
As sweet as morning leading night astray
Where little flowers bloomed round a varied host
That travel felt delighted to be lost

Nor grudged the steps that he had ta-en as vain
When right roads traced his journeys and again –
Nay, on a broken tree he’d sit awhile
To see the mores and fields and meadows smile

Sometimes with cowslaps smothered – then all white
With daiseys – then the summer’s splendid sight
Of cornfields crimson o’er the headache bloomd
Like splendid armys for the battle plumed
He gazed upon them with wild fancy’s eye
As fallen landscapes from an evening sky

These paths are stopt – the rude philistine’s thrall
Is laid upon them and destroyed them all
Each little tyrant with his little sign
Shows where man claims earth glows no more divine
But paths to freedom and to childhood dear
A board sticks up to notice ‘no road here’
And on the tree with ivy overhung
The hated sign by vulgar taste is hung
As tho’ the very birds should learn to know
When they go there they must no further go

Thus, with the poor, scared freedom bade goodbye
And much they feel it in the smothered sigh
And birds and trees and flowers without a name

All sighed when lawless law’s enclosure came
And dreams of plunder in such rebel schemes
Have found too truly that they were but dreams.